Everything’s for sale. Every home you pass on your way to work can be bought, for a price, whether it’s listed or not.
But that doesn’t mean every seller will actually work with you to achieve a sale… even when the seller’s home is LISTED FOR SALE!!!
Take a HUD-owned home some buyers are trying to buy right now. HUD, or the Department of Housing and Urban Development, has homes for sale in all 50 states. You can log onto their website and see the homes — many of them very good deals — and then have a Realtor “bid” for a home on your behalf.
It’s not the same as making an offer with a stack of paperwork, like we do with regular MLS-listed homes. Yes, the HUD homes for sale in Bellingham are listed on the MLS… but HUD has its own set of rules.
A pre-approved buyer wishes to buy a HUD home, right now. So we’ve input all the information the HUD website asks for, including the terms of our very strong offer, and topped it off with a call to the HUD-hired listing agent. This all took place last Sunday.
Today is Friday, and you know what we’ve heard?
Nothing. La Nada. Zilch.
The HUD-hired listing agent told me up front that, if we don’t get the house, we’ll never even hear back from HUD.
Let me comment on that before moving on with the story. So… my clients and I go through the process of offering the largest sum of money 99% of the population will ever spend on anything, to take this liability of a house off HUD’s books, and if we’re not the winning bid, we don’t even get a “Thanks for playing!”?
It’s an automated system, I understand. And I’m no computer programmer, but how hard would it be to write a couple lines of code that tell the automated system: “If a bid is not chosen, e-mail that bidder to say, “Thanks for playing! But you lost.”" Seems pretty simple to me. But hey, I’m not a programmer. Or the US Government.
Yes, on with the story. We made a very strong offer on Sunday, waited patiently ’til Wednesday, and heard nothing. The listing agent hadn’t heard anything either, I was told when I called her. The ”listing” is still live on the MLS and live on HUD’s website.
So we offered again, on Wednesday afternoon.
Now it’s Friday. And we’ve heard… Nothing.
Meanwhile, HUD (read: taxpayers), are keeping the power, water, sewer, and taxes paid on this abandoned house as its condition slips further into disrepair, day after day.
The moral of this tale is this:
Everything is for sale. But not everything can be bought. Sometimes, not even things a seller NEEDS to sell, has listed for sale, has marketed to sell, and has a reduced price.
And yet all you hear is how the market is soft.
